-
12/18/2014
Three foreign nationals, who are accused by the US of collaborating with terrorists, denied their guilt at a hearing at Prague’s municipal court on Thursday. Ali Fayad, Faouzi Jaber of Libanon and Chalid Marabi of the Ivory Coast were allegedly planning to sell weapons and cocaine to American secret agents, who were disguised as members of a Colombian terrorist organisation. The court on Thursday started to discuss their extradition to the US. The men have been in custody since April, when they were arrested by the Czech police at a hotel in Prague.
-
12/18/2014
Czechs disposed of unused medicines worth two billion Czech crowns last year, according to a survey carried out by the State Institute for Drug Control. Unused medicines made up for more than three percent of all the medication supplies to pharmacies and hospitals. Only a half of Czech households dispose of unused medicines by returning them to pharmacies. The survey also indicates that Czechs have stock piles of medicines in their homes worth 362 million crowns.
-
12/18/2014
President Miloš Zeman on Thursday signed next year’s state budget into law. The budget projects a deficit of 100 billion crowns, or around three percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Compared to this year’s budget, the revenues are set to increase by 20 billion while expenditures should rise by 8 billion. The budget was backed by 105 MPs of the governing coalition and one opposition MP from the Dawn party. The opposition has criticized the budget over lower funds allocated for investment; these are set to reach 75 billion crowns next year, some 25 billion less than in 2014.
-
12/18/2014
Czechs are marking the third anniversary of the death of Václav Havel, the country’s first post-communist president. Cardinal Dominik Duka will celebrate a mass in his memory at Prague Crossroads centre on Thursday afternoon and the Václav Havel library will be hosting a staging of Havel’s play Protest. People around the country are also joining the “short trousers for Václav Havel” initiative, rolling their pants up to remember Václav Havel’s first inauguration to the presidency, when he wore visibly short trousers.
-
12/18/2014
A Czech woman has filed a lawsuit with a court in Norway appealing a decision of the country’s social services to take away her two sons and place them in foster care, the paper Mladá fronta Dnes reported on Thursday. The lawsuit is a prerequisite for Czech diplomats to put pressure on Norwegian authorities in the case, the daily said. Norway’s social services took the sons away from their Czech parents in 2011 over alleged sexual abuse. The police later dropped the case but the authorities placed the children in foster care. The case has recently come into the spotlight in the Czech Republic where a number of officials including President Miloš Zeman vowed to help get the children back to their mother.
-
12/18/2014
A man who set himself on fire in central Prague on Tuesday night has died of his injuries, a spokesman for the Vinohrady hospital in the capital said. The man, who was 56, doused himself in a flammable liquid and set himself alight at the top of Wenceslas Square shortly before midnight. Passers-by attempted to put out the flames with jackets before a fire extinguisher was found. He was taken to hospital with severe burns where he died on Wednesday night. A spokesperson for the police said the man had been on day-release from a Prague 8 mental hospital but had not returned in the evening.
-
12/17/2014
A court of appeals in Prague on Wednesday sentenced the former head of Prague City Hall’s IT department, Ivan Seyček, to 3.5 years in prison over his role in the controversial Opencard project. Mr Seyček, had been found guilty of manipulating the selections procedure for a smart card in favour of the firm Haguess, despite the fact the company failed the meet the city hall’s requirements. In February, a lower court handed Mr Seyček a conditional sentence. The court of appeals confirmed a conditional sentence for another former city hall official. Some 1.2 million people in Prague use Opencard as a public transport pass; the massively overpriced project has cost the city around 1.35 billion crowns.
-
12/17/2014
The Czech Republic’s public debt should this year reach 1.663 trillion crowns, some 20 billion less than in the previous year, Finance Minister Andre Babiš said. If Mr Babiš’s estimate proves correct, the public debt would decrease for the first time since 1995. Mr Babiš spoke to reporters after meeting President Miloš Zeman on Wednesday. Mr Zeman had established a personal fund to decrease the public debt; the two officials destroyed a four-million state bond as the fund’s latest contribution towards the debt.
-
12/17/2014
The European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen has warned the Czech government that if it fails to address shortcoming related to the country’s recently approved civil service act, EU funding for Czech operational programme in the period 2014 – 2020 will be put on hold, the news website lidovky.cz reported on Wednesday. In a letter to the Czech ministers of interior, regional development and labour and social affairs, the commissioner said that the areas of public officials’ salaries and the transparency of their selection procedures still needed to be adjusted. The civil service act was approved in October; however, President Miloš Zeman filed a complaint over the legislation with the Constitutional Court.
-
12/17/2014
The Czech National Bank on Wednesday announced it would keep its interest rates unchanged at 0.05 percent, and would continue intervening against the Czech crown to keep the exchange rate at around 27 crowns per euro. Last month, the bank said it would continue intervening at foreign exchange markets until 2016, primarily to curb the risk of deflation. The bank’s key two-week repo rate has been kept at the historic low since November 2012. An analyst for the Home Credit loans provider quoted by the news agency ČTK said he was not surprised by the move, and suggested that foreign exchange interventions could possibly end in a year’s time.
Pages
- « první
- ‹ předchozí
- …
- 3642
- 3643
- 3644
- 3645
- 3646
- 3647
- 3648
- 3649
- 3650
- …
- následující ›
- poslední »